


like a ghost

by swave



Category: Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Not A Fix-It, One Shot, Post-Canon, more of a "calling attention to how fucky canon was" fic, she/her pronouns for Laserbeak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swave/pseuds/swave
Summary: Locked away, Soundwave reflects.





	like a ghost

They had put him in a cell.

Cold, cramped, suffocating… yet there was such an _emptiness._

 His body felt… hollow, somehow. Incomplete. Unraveling piece by piece into some yet-unseen void, except for that fragment which had been taken just outside his reach, so painfully close and yet so _impossibly_ far.

 They hadn’t said a word as he struggled to reach for her.

 …Neither had he.

 Perhaps that was fair. Perhaps he didn’t deserve their words. He had given them up of his own volition, so very long ago, and had only just begun to grasp at them again when he was… caged.

 He had been trapped before. He wasn’t quite sure which prison was worse.

 Either way, he was alone. More alone. She was gone, and the only reason this didn’t tip the scales in disfavor of his new _box_ was that he knew, with all certainty, that she was still alive. This meant that they must have discovered some way of fueling her without direct access to his spark. This meant that she could, potentially, outlive him.

 He didn’t know whether that was something to be grateful for.

 It was very cold without her.

 They’d stripped away all the makeshift “upgrades” he had salvaged for himself, from the undead husk of the _other_ poor shambling wretch cursed to roam that phantom dimension. He didn’t miss the armor. To wear it had felt wrong, in a spark-rendingly visceral way; wrong like all else he had witnessed from behind the quantum veil, like curling up in the shadow of one long-perished only to be torn from even that grim comfort by the screams of a waking planet’s wrath. Now he was alone, and naked.

 --No, that implied there had been substance beneath the stolen plating and close-clutched companions. Why keep nothing in a cage? Why force him to reveal just how empty he was? Showing him off to the masses all looking right through him, they could say, _"we have captured a ghost."_  And nobody would be any the wiser. There were no words of denial that could come to save him.

 There were no words at all that could come.

 The last thing he had spoken was a lie, and that seemed fitting. Not a lie of malicious intent, nor a deception borne of the desire to control, but a lie nonetheless. A self-contained lie. A lie that nobody could believe.

 No matter how hard he had tried to believe it.

 They’d asked him questions. Too many, not enough. They wanted to hurry the procedures along, and so had attempted only to ascertain whether a fair trial would truly be worth the time wasted having him _not_ locked away somewhere; the answer, it seemed, had been ‘no’. He was a danger, or so they said. It was unclear what exactly this ‘danger’ entailed. He was bared of all weaponry, save for the ideological guillotine which hummed its revolutionary dirge from the twin sigils adorning his arms.

 He hadn’t yet seen a prisoner not bearing the icon. Sometimes, far away, he would hear a muffled cry and the hiss of heat-warping metal.

 It was cold.

 Nobody had told him anything. Not how their planet had regained its vibrant cityscapes, not how all these new Cybertronians had come into being, not how the new system of governance was run, not the reason he had been locked away to rust in silence. He could guess.

 Megatron wasn’t here. That was certain. They wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to trap him if they’d already held the object of his search in custody. Wherever his Lord was, they didn’t want him found.

 Perhaps they feared him. Perhaps they would rather the universe forget.

 (either way it was hardly a given that he was even _alive_ )

 (perhaps that was why they hadn’t told him? did they maintain this tormenting silence in anticipation of a destructive grief-fueled rage at the knowledge they kept locked away?)

 Well, the joke was on them. There was no place for rage. Not anymore.

 No place for anything but resolute emptiness.

 Nothing left but a worn-down frail husk, pinned down like a butterfly behind glass.

 When he could finally sleep, he wondered, would he see them again? Would their sparks find him? Or would he merely meld into the endless night, losing all traces of his broken individuality, forgetting the pain and the love and the bitter yearnings for a place to belong whose distant glimmerings plagued him from so very far away?

 Or would he ever sleep at all? Was it his curse, now, to dwell like a bottled specter within this place until the very walls were worn down by time and acid rain?

 Questions. So many questions. He thought in nothing but questions, though he knew well that no answers would come.

 He hoped for oblivion, selfish though he knew it was. Selfish, selfish Soundwave. Always wanting more. Wanting the impossible; wanting to be _seen_ and _heard_ and _loved_ . Selfish. He deserved nothing—no! not even that. _Nothing_ was too good for him. _Nothing_ was an escape from the cruel hands of fate. He wasn’t worth an escape.

 He wondered if anyone would remember his name.

 He wondered if his Lord would remember. Unlikely. Selfish, that thought. Always so _selfish_.

 Unbidden, he felt his own trembling arm rise up, slowly, yet with all the desperation of one being pulled beneath the surface of a smooth black sea. Reaching, shakily, towards an unseen horizon; towards the abyss opposite his own.

 Across the walls, dull lights reflected, flickering imperceptibly.

 His servo, digits splayed weakly, calling out as best they could.

 Not good enough.

 He was so tired.

 He was so cold.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading my depression-fueled nonsense. perhaps one day somebody on the writing team for rid15 will look back on how soundwaves """character arc""" ended and think "hey that was kind of screwed up and unfair and awful if you think about it for more than .4 seconds. this guy jumped off a spaceship into the ocean after his leaders corpse and then got stuck alone on the planet with no way off, all while trapped in a dimension where he couldnt interact with anything, and all our protagonists do when he escapes is call him creepy and try to arrest him for building an sos beacon"


End file.
